Thursday, December 26, 2013

Roasted Oolongs are challenging to brew well. As the brewer, you are facing the same difficulty as a tea maker: finding the right balance between the roasted and the fresh notes. Each Oolong is roasted differently and to succeed you'll have to know how your leaves have been roasted, so that you can express the characteristics of their roasting level and style.

To master a good tea brewing, it helps to practice several times with the same tea. Why? Because each tea is different and requires some adjustment. It's an interactive process that you fine-tune with the help of your senses, as you analyze each brew.

Today, I would like to show you my first 3 brews of my winter 2013 Hung Shui Oolong from Shan Lin Shi (the strong/high roast version):

What distinguishes this Hungshui Oolong is its high altitude origin and its slow/deep roast (over the span of a week). With such a high quality of leaves, I prefer to use fewer of them and compensate with longer brewing times. This has the advantage of making each session more affordable! And since the brewing times are longer, this tea allows for slower movements and a more peaceful atmosphere: you have less the stress or the concern that you'll over-steep the leaves.

Note: I don't talk during these videos. My silence (and a pleasant Christmas Oratorio) helped me to focus on the brewing.
1st brew: After a good preheating, I pour with controlled strength to make the leaves turn and unfurl well.
2nd brew: I pour carefully on the open leaves and a quick brew, because the leaves have opened up well after the first brew.
3rd brew: I pour with more strength close to the spout.

The leaves have opened nicely and occupy almost all the space in the teapot, but they are not crammed inside. They have the first class (travel) experience: enough room to stretch their legs branches!

A close examination of the open leaves shows that we find a good amount of buds, and that some of the leaves were insect bitten. Even the more mature leaves have opened up and don't feel stiff or burned at all.

The sweet nutty and creamy flavors retain their delicate high mountain freshness. The lingering aftertaste seems never to end.
It's a great tea to wish you a merry and warm Christmas season!

The dry leaves are very big. The fragrances are light and flowery with some sweet notes.

The first brew has a very light and clear yellow color. (Later brews will have more saturated colors.)

The taste is very clean, sweet and energetic. There's almost a sparkling feeling to this tea! Here, the term 'Champagne tea' would be very fitting. The tea gives a sensation of freshness and lightness, even though the mature Oolong leaves also have a very structured, deep body on the palate. The aftertaste is long and refined. All over my mouth, I feel a light sparking sensation, like very small Champagne bubbles. And like for a great sparkling white wine, the acidity is well balanced with the sweetness and prolongs into a very pure floral aftertaste.

The bright effervescence and the rich texture of this very clean high mountain Oolong are what defines the first harvest of a new plantation. The leaves contain the natural nutrients of a soil that has never been farmed before. This explains why the leaves are so thick. I barely covered the bottom with my dry leaves, but they open up so large that they fill the whole gaiwan!

These very concentrated, top quality Oolong leaves are so full of energy that you don't need too many of them. Best is to brew them with long brewing times. That's a smart and cost effective way to enjoy some of Taiwan's best High Mountain Oolongs! (Teadb started a similar discussion when brewing my spring 2013 Shan Lin Shi Luanze Oolong.).

Monday, December 09, 2013

Teaparker has published a new book (in Chinese). This one is dedicated to the beauty of old teas. What are the special tastes, fragrances of old tea? What material to use to brew them well? How to appreciate them? And what strategies to adopt to enjoy good old teas?...

One of his best advice is that if you want to drink excellent old tea, the best is to start early to age some yourself!

This is what I started to do in the winter of 2007 with some roasted luanze Oolong from Lishan! Let's see what it tastes like after 6 years of resting in this white porcelain jar. Initially, I had it sealed with candle wax. This was a good idea to make sure that you keep your hands away from it and don't drink it too quickly! But it's not very convenient to monitor the tea over time. When I opened it for the first time 3 years ago, the wax made quite a mess and I haven't removed it completely for that reason. I don't recommend doing it anymore.

3 years ago, I also removed the plastic foil that was glued to the inside of the jar's lid. All these chemicals (plastic and glue) had an bad impact on the leafs' fragrance at the time. The difference with the tea in the original plastic foil was little. (This was Teaparker's advice that I had tested then).

As I'm writing this article, I'm remembering this comparison and find the same Lishan leaves stored in the original foil (without vacuum seal). (Update: this is still the same foil that the farmer used to pack the tea originally, similar to what most merchants use here in Taiwan. I have kept it tightly closed in a carton, in a closet = in a clean and dark place. Both teas were kept in my apartment in Taiwan, exposed to more or less the same temperatures.) The sight of the dry leaves is much different now. The jar stored leaves appear shinier, while those from the foil appear dull. A parallel brewing of the 2 leaves shows that the brew from the foil is a little darker, but not as clear as the leaves from the jar.

The fragrances are from the foil are not as powerful, but they still contain notes of fire (roasting) and feel rather rough. The brew from the jar has evolved away from the nutty notes of roasting towards osmanthus scents and even plum scents.

The major difference is in taste. Stored in foil, the taste is hard, rough, slightly bitter. Stored in porcelain jar, the taste is sweet, refined with sour notes. These sour notes add length to the aftertaste and turn into more sweetness and a nice salivation in the mouth.

The open leaves from the jar appear a little bit more red than the leaves from the foil. This seems to indicate that some post oxidation happens more in the jar than in the foil.

After 6 years of storage, this tea has evolved very differently depending on how it was stored. It either felt rough or heavenly. The jar led to much improvement compared to the foil. This demonstrates that it really makes sense to age your Oolong yourself with a porcelain jar: tea merchants store their teas in plastic foils and vacuum sealed 99.9% of the time.

(Note: I'm making 10 x 15 grams of this jar stored Lishan Hungshui Oolong available for purchase on my selection for people interested in understanding aged Oolong. You'll get the best results with a low leaf ratio and long brewing times. A strong first pour will help open the rolled leaves.)